# Remote Through X-server

**URL:** <https://vapor.discourse.group/t/remote-through-x-server/452>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [May 19, 2025, 9:46pm UTC](https://vapor.discourse.group/t/remote-through-x-server/452 "2025-05-19T21:46:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ColbyF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c68b51/32.png) [@ColbyF](https://vapor.discourse.group/u/ColbyF)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2025, 9:46pm UTC](https://vapor.discourse.group/t/remote-through-x-server/452/1 "2025-05-19T21:46:47Z")

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Can VAPOR be run through an SSH shell like Putty using Xming for an X-server?

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**Author:** ![pearse](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/vapor.discourse.group/pearse/32/177_2.png) [@pearse](https://vapor.discourse.group/u/pearse)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2025, 5:12pm UTC](https://vapor.discourse.group/t/remote-through-x-server/452/2 "2025-05-21T17:12:06Z")

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Unfortunately not. All 3D visualization applications need to use the VirtualGL pipeline to use the system’s graphics card. I recommend TurboVNC for this, but TigerVNC, TightVNC, and other VNC client/servers would work if configured correctly.

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**Author:** ![ColbyF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c68b51/32.png) [@ColbyF](https://vapor.discourse.group/u/ColbyF)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 2:42pm UTC](https://vapor.discourse.group/t/remote-through-x-server/452/3 "2025-05-29T14:42:05Z")

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Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like TurboVNC will compress the graphics instructions and send them through to my remote client. I’ll give it a try.

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**Author:** ![ColbyF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c68b51/32.png) [@ColbyF](https://vapor.discourse.group/u/ColbyF)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2025, 5:26pm UTC](https://vapor.discourse.group/t/remote-through-x-server/452/4 "2025-05-29T17:26:34Z")

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One quick question: does VAPOR act as a VNC server, or do I need to install TurboVNC on both the server side as well as the client side? It looks like I would use the VNC viewer on the client side to ssh through to the server and my guess is that I need to have TurboVNC running as a server to allow VAPOR to display?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pearse](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/vapor.discourse.group/pearse/32/177_2.png) [@pearse](https://vapor.discourse.group/u/pearse)\
**Post date:** [May 31, 2025, 6:20pm UTC](https://vapor.discourse.group/t/remote-through-x-server/452/5 "2025-05-31T18:20:06Z")

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Hi Colby, the VAPOR does not act as a VNC server. The VNC software needs to be installed on both server and client machines.

After that, you can launch vapor with a command called _vglrun_, which will forward the graphics pipeline to the client desktop. We have documentation on [how to run VAPOR on our graphics cluster here](https://ncar.github.io/VaporDocumentationWebsite/downloads/runningVaporOnCasper.html), after VNC software is already configured on the server.